contradictions

sometimes i think that we are wisest

where we know the least

strongest when we sink in grief

or rise in joyous sparks

most able when we cease to try

and simply lie unresisting in the stream

of all that is, 

just sitting with it in the quiet dark 

where we hatch our souls.

lunacy

i know why chained dogs howl at the moon

i turn my teeth on myself

i rend what is already tattered

rather than tear at the one who tears at me

how mysterious, the changeable and ever-cycling moon

how mysterious, that people can say they love,

and mean such different things

we make our chains by what we give or keep

i gave you all and freely

i made you all that mattered to me

if my lonely spirit sings in the dry spells,

if it sings to you of rain, of waxing full again,

it sings to the unhearing, incomprehensible moon

grammar lessons

past, present, future

there is a grammar to life---

you need to know how to conjugate

your hopes and memories,

how (and what) to decline,

what tense to use for the tensions

amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant

cogito, ergo sum.

(the sum is sometimes greater, sometimes less,

than the parts.)

past tense:

after my daughter was born,

i asked him

more than once---

come with me, i said,

please, come with me

on this journey i cannot help but take

because it is my life.

present tense:

i sit at the window

watching cold rain

slide down the glass,

confronting all the ways in which

i've failed,

fighting the temptation

to keep doing nothing.

future tense:

i want to take these broken pieces

that were my life

shake them up and let them fall,

glittering and turning

and watch them land,

to read a pattern into random shards

and hope they make some new whole.

grow

who among us is not

a girl interrupted,

a woman spinning wildly

as she tries to find her center

we face our challenges

as best we may

long weeping nights

and long enduring days

we spin, we fall,

we pick up, pack up, and move on

we bravely enter and re-enter

our own unknown

we turn aside from fears

and stubbornly we say

we will care for all,

no one excepted

not even ourselves

time to plant the tears.

darksong

the slip of skin on skin
as pillows lump and sheets tangle
at night, a forest grows
green leaves twine around us
who lie like tangled ruins
hearts beating still
with the rhythm of the night
which sings of secret things

blooming scarlet and gold

beneath a cold moon